Sweet Savage Eden Read Online Free

Jassy’s great tray. The coachman, sealed at the big kitchen table, tipped his hat to Jassy and offered her a friendly grin. She smiled vaguely in return, balancing her tray. Cook flashed her a quick smile, too, but gave her attention to the visiting coachman.
    “Lord love us, I don’t believe a word of it, Matthew!” she said, but she laughed delightedly.
    “Well, ’tis true! Jassy, you should hear this one!”
    “Matthew, she’s a sweet young thing!” Cook protested sternly.
    “But it’s a great story! All about Joel Higgins, who worked in the London livery. He was such a handsome, strapping youth! He told me about this old woman, see, and she was willing to pay for his services—but he weren’t that hard up! So he made her think he werewilling to give when he weren’t, and when the old battle-ax had her clothing a-gone, he took her purse and disappeared, saying he just had to wash up. Imagine her—a-laying there waiting while he stole away her purse!” He laughed heartily, enjoying his own story. “A good comeuppance for the old girl, eh?”
    “Ah, and Joel will meet up with the hangman, that he will!” Cook prophesied dourly. “And, Matthew, you watch your mouth around my young help. Hmmph! Jassy, I be needin’ you in here, I am, and he’s got you out on the floor. Well, damn the man, then, if his sides of beast ain’t roasted the way he’d have ’em! Sorry, girl, ’bout your ma.”
    “Thank you,” Jassy murmured, gritting her teeth against the weight of the tray balanced on her shoulder. She paused, though, when she should have turned with her burden and hurried. “Cook, have you by any chance—”
    “Lord love ye, girl! I’d gladly loan ye a coin if I had me one! I sent me last money home for me own old mother! You’ve my prayers, though, girl. The Lord God will provide, you just look to Him!”
    The coachman sniggered. “Aye! The Lord God provides—more’n likely He helps those what help themselves!”
    Jassy had already given up on the Lord, and she would fall beneath the weight of the tray soon. She gave Cook a smile and hurried out.
    The night wore on. She felt that endless hours passed. At long last she was released to go back to the attic.
    She ran instantly to Linnet’s side, then put her forehead against the bed, crying softly as she heard her mother’s great rasping attempts to draw breath.
    Quinine. Tamsyn said it might ease her.
    There was a soft rapping at her door. “ ’Tis me—Molly, Jass.”
    Jassy came back to her feet and hurried to the door, throwing it open. Molly studied her ravaged face.
    “Is she no better, then?”
    “No better at all.”
    “Ah, lass!” She paused for a moment, hesitating, studying Jassy.
    The girl should have had more, Molly thought. All of them had thought it. Cook, her, the upstairs maids. The girl was better than this life. Better than endless scrubbing of cold stone floors. Better than her raw, ragged hands, better than her rag of a dress. They’d all had dreams for her. She was their prize—more lovely than a human had a right to be, even if it was hard to see that loveliness, clad as she was in rags, her glorious golden hair all trussed up in an ugly net. She was fine. A rose among thorns, a blossom of spring against the dead of winter.
    She was doomed. To this life; to hell on earth.
    Molly sighed. “Jassy, I know your ma never much wanted you falling to our ways, but, well, that tall handsome lord was asking questions about you. He said that his lodgings were at the Towergate, across the row, and that he meant to stay up late.”
    Jassy inhaled sharply. An illness seemed to sweep through her stomach.
    The blond man. The kind, handsome blond man had wanted her.
    She stiffened. As kind as he had been, he wanted a whore for the night. She could have created an entire daydream around him; she could have envisioned him as all that life had to offer.
    Her shoulders dropped. Linnet rasped away behind her. She clenched her fists